Transnational law of the over-the-counter derivatives market : a study on the interactions between finance and law

The emergence and rapid evolution of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market in the early 1980s revolutionized the whole landscape of finance. OTC derivatives are financial products that are transnational in their nature. These products do not follow any jurisdictional lines nor theoretical boundaries focusing on state-made law. They transcend them. The central argument of this research is that legal scholarship requires a legal theoretical approach capable of recognizing private normativity and that accepts that it is not only nation states and organizations that derive their powers from states that can produce law. Transnational method allows the observer to acknowledge the transnational elements of finance and then set them into a legal theoretical structure. This research retells the evolution of the OTC derivatives market through the application of transnational method. Instead of building a narrative emphasizing the de- and reregulation policies and politics, the research focuses on early beginnings of the largest capital market in the world, the so-called eurobond market of the 1960s. Through legal innovation, this market developed its own transnational rules. In the 1980s, this market became integrated with the rapidly growing market for swaps, a type of OTC derivative. Seeing the demand for contractual standardization,a handful of financial institutions became organized through a trade organization today known as the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. (ISDA). The main product of ISDA, the ISDA Master Agreement architecture, had become by far the most used standard agreement in the OTC derivatives market already before the 1990s. Post financial crisis of 2008, this transnational contract still holds a central position in a very different regulatory environment than that of the 1980s. Transnational method identifies the supply and demand for financial and legal innovation, and the facilitative role that nation states and international organizations can play in enhancing private normativity and the transnationalisation of law. The results that transnational method tells are first and foremost descriptive. The application of transnational method requires a functional, rather than formal, understanding of ‘law’ because this allows private normativity to be recognized and its ontology properly understood.Oikeustieteellisessä tutkimuksessa keskitytään perinteisesti valtiolähtöiseen oikeuteen. Oikeusteoreettisena perusolettamuksena on tällöin se, että laki ja oikeus ovat valtioiden yksinomaista aluetta, jolle muut valtion oikeudenkäyttöalueella noudatetut muut, ei-oikeudelliset normit ovat alisteisia. Tästä perusolettamuksesta poiketen transnationaalinen oikeustutkimus painottaa oikeuden monimuotoisuutta: vaikka valtiolla onkin yksinomainen lainsäädäntövalta, sen oikeudenkäyttöalueella voi toimia myös valtiolähtöiseen oikeuteen tavalla tai toisella rinnastuvia yksityisiä normijärjestyksiä. Tämänkaltaisia yksityisiä normijärjestyksiä voidaan tietyin edellytyksin kutsua transnationaaliseksi oikeudeksi. Transnationaalisen oikeustutkimuksen perusolettamus on, että samalla valtiollisella oikeudenkäyttöalueella voi olla olemassa useita rinnakkaisia normijärjestyksiä, joista valtiollinen oikeus on toki keskeisin ja painavin mutta lopulta kuitenkin vain yksi oikeuden lähde yksityisten normijärjestysten rinnalla. Tutkimus käsittelee finanssimarkkinoiden transnationaalista oikeutta. Tutkimuskohteina ovat erityisesti 1960-luvun joukkovelkakirjamarkkinoiden ja 1980-luvun over-the-counter (OTC) -johdannaismarkkinoiden transnationaalinen oikeus. Tutkimusväite on, että näiden kahden toisiinsa nivoutuneen markkinan transnationaalinen oikeus syntyi itsenäisesti ja spontaanisti markkinatoiminnan sivutuotteena ilman valtiolähtöistä suunnittelua. Erityisesti vielä 1960- ja 1970-luvuilla valtiot pyrkivät tietoisesti estämään pääomien vapaata liikkuvuutta, ja näistä pyrkimyksistä huolimatta kansainväliset joukkovelkakirjamarkkinat kasvoivat samaan aikaan hyvin nopeasti. Markkinaliberalisaatioon tähtäävät valtiojohtoiset tavoitteet syntyivät vasta sen jälkeen, kun markkinatoimijat olivat jo käytännössä vapauttaneet itse itsensä monista pääomien vapaan liikkuvuuden esteistä. Tämä spontaani kehitys kiihtyi, kun OTC-johdannaistuotteiden käyttö yleistyi maailmanlaajuisesti nopeassa tahdissa 1980-luvulla. Sittemmin valtiot ovat sekä itsenäisesti että kansainvälisellä yhteistyöllä pyrkineet sääntelemään finanssimarkkinoita. Haasteeksi jää, että transnationaalisella markkinalla paikalliseksi jäävä finanssisääntely voi tuottaa odottamattomia ja ei-toivottuja sivuvaikutuksia

Warm summers and rich biotic communities during N-Hemisphere deglaciation

Detailed studies on fossil remains of plants or animals in glacial lake sediments are rare. As a result, environmental conditions right at the moment of deglaciation of the large N-Hemisphere ice-sheets remain largely unknown. Here we study three deglacial phases of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet as a unique, repeated element in a long sediment record preserved at Sokli in northern Finland. We summarize extensive multi-proxy data (diatoms, phytoliths, chironomids, pollen, spores, non-pollen palynomorphs, macrofossils, lithology, loss-on-ignition, C/N) obtained on glacial lake sediments dated to the early Holocene (ca. 10 kyr BP), early MIS 3 (ca. 50 kyr BP) and early MIS 5a (ca. 80 kyr BP). In contrast to the common view of an unproductive ice-marginal environment, our study reconstructs rich ecosystems both in the glacial lake and along the shores with forest on recently deglaciated land. Higher than present-day summer temperatures are reconstructed based on a large variety of aquatic taxa. Rich biota developed due to the insolation-induced postglacial warming and high nutrient levels, the latter resulting from erosion of fresh bedrock and sediment, leaching of surface soils, decay of plant material under shallow water conditions, and sudden decreases in lake volume. Aquatic communities responded quickly to deglaciation and warm summers and reflect boreal conditions, in contrast to the terrestrial ecosystem which responded with some delay probably due to time required for slow soil formation processes. Birch forest is reconstructed upon deglaciation of the large LGM ice-sheet and shrub tundra following the probably faster melting smaller MIS 4 and MIS 5b ice-sheets. Our study shows that glacial lake sediments can provide valuable palaeo-environmental data, that aquatic biota and terrestrial vegetation rapidly accommodated to new environmental conditions during deglaciation, and that glacial lake ecosystems, and the carbon stored in their sediments, should be included in earth system modeling.Peer reviewe

Spoken language skills in children with bilateral hearing aids or bilateral cochlear implants at the age of three years

Abstract Objectives: Early hearing aid (HA) fitting and cochlear implants (CIs) aim to reduce the effects of hearing loss (HL) on spoken language development. The goals of this study were (1) to examine spoken language skills of children with bilateral HAs and children with bilateral CIs; (2) to compare their language skills to the age-norms of peers with normal hearing (NH); and (3) to investigate factors associated with spoken language outcomes. Design: Spoken language results of 56 Finnish children with HL were obtained from a nationwide prospective multicenter study. Children with HL comprised two groups: children with mild-to-severe HL who used bilateral HAs (BiHA group, n = 28) and children with profound HL who used bilateral CIs (BiCI group, n = 28). Children’s spoken language comprehension, expressive and receptive vocabulary, and phonological skills were compared with normative values of children with NH at the age of three years. Odds ratio (OR) was calculated to compare proportions of children below age-norms in BiHA and BiCI groups. Factors associated with spoken language outcomes were modeled with analysis of covariance. Results: At the age of 3 years, 50%–96% of children with HL performed 1 SD or more below the mean of the normative sample of age-peers with NH in spoken language skills, depending on the language domain. Receptive vocabulary and phonological skills were the most vulnerable language domains. In receptive vocabulary, 82% of the children in the BiHA group and 50% of the children in the BiCI group scored 1 SD or more below the normative mean. The BiHA group was 4.4 times more likely to have poorer receptive vocabulary than the BiCI group. In phonological skills, 96% of children in the BiHA group and 60% of the children in the BiCI group scored 1 SD or more below the normative mean. The BiHA group was 18.0 times more likely to have poorer phonological skills than the BiCI group. The analysis of covariance models showed that unaided pure-tone average, PTA0.5–4 kHz, had a significant effect on spoken language comprehension in the BiHA group. For the BiCI group, age at HL diagnosis and age at CI activation had a significant effect on expressive vocabulary. High maternal level of education had a significant effect on language comprehension and expressive vocabulary and female gender on phonological skills. Conclusions: At the age of 3 years, especially receptive vocabulary and phonological skills caused difficulties for children with HL showing also considerable individual variation. Children with bilateral HAs seemed to be more likely to have poorer receptive vocabulary and phonological skills than children with bilateral CIs. A variety of factors was associated with outcomes in both groups. Close monitoring of spoken language skills of children with HL is important for ensuring similar opportunities for all children with HL and timely intervention, when needed